The Apple IIc itself was working, but I still had the usual problem: no ready-made disks to boot from. I went ahead and set it up from scratch using ADTPro, which meant gathering the machine, a monitor, another computer, blank 5.25-inch disks, and a couple of cables. For media I used double-sided, double-density disks, and for the host side I used a Windows PC.
The cable was the first real job. I used a USB-to-serial adapter, a 5-pin DIN cable, and a DB9 female connector with housing, then wired it to match the Apple IIc serial pinout from the ADTPro documentation. The main serial lines went straight through where needed, and a few pins had to be tied together on the DIN and DB9 sides, so I checked everything with a meter before closing it up.
On the PC I downloaded ADTPro, extracted it, and ran it from the command line. Once the Apple IIc was connected, I brought it to the prompt with Control-Reset, set ADTPro to the correct COM port at 115200 baud, and used the serial bootstrap option. That loaded the ADTPro client over the serial connection directly into the IIc, which is a nice way to get going when you truly start with nothing.
From there I formatted a blank disk in the Apple IIc’s internal drive and wrote out an ADTPro disk image first. Once that finished, I rebooted from the physical disk I had just made and confirmed it came up properly. After that I changed the working directory on the host machine to my disk images, formatted another floppy, and wrote out Oregon Trail. Since that image used both sides, I notched the disk with a hole punch and wrote side two on the reverse.
Oregon Trail booted and ran, with graphics and sound both working. In the middle of all this I also managed to set the Apple IIc top cover against a lit candle on the bench, and that started a small fire. I got the burning case into the sink and put it out, and the damage stayed mostly to the top cover and some melted wax on the desk.
With that cleaned up, I went ahead and tested the ImageWriter II printer I had picked up for the machine. The error light came on at first, but that turned out to be because it had no paper loaded. After feeding in paper, I used the printer’s built-in self-test by holding Form Feed while powering it on, and it printed a character test page, although the ribbon was pretty light.
I then connected the printer to the Apple IIc and tested output from BASIC with PR#1. That gave me a simple printout, including “Retro Hack Shack,” so the computer-to-printer connection was good. After that I checked the Fingerprint screen printing card from the previous episode. The external button didn’t do anything, so I pulled the board, found evidence of earlier rework on the back, and tested the button and cable. The button itself was worn out, so I soldered on a replacement switch with wires and routed it so I could trigger it from the side.
That got the card working. I was able to bring up its menu, print the Apple II startup screen, and then capture and print a game screen from Summer Games, including a larger double-size print using the card’s options.
— Aaron
Links
Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
01:21 – Preparing To Make Disks
08:22 – Make The Serial Cable
11:55 – Bootstrapping With ADTPro
21:36 – Making New Disks With ADTPro
28:32 – FIRE!
30:38 – Testing The Printer
32:42 – Test Print From The IIc
34:14 – Fingerprint Card
40:58 – More Fingerprint Funtions
45:26 – Wrap Up